General Cardiology Fellows

Neil Kalwani, MD, MPP

3rd Year-Research

Dr. Neil Kalwani grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana and attended college at Yale University. He spent a year working in community outreach as an AmeriCorps member at a health center in New York City. He then earned graduate degrees in medicine and public policy from Harvard University and trained in internal medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he completed the Management Leadership Track. His research focuses on assessing the impact of policies and care deliveryMore innovations designed to improve the efficiency and value of care provided to patients with cardiovascular disease. He plans to pursue a career as an academic cardiologist with a focus on health services research and health care management.

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Ashish Sarraju, MD

3rd Year-Research

Dr. Ashish Sarraju grew up in India and attended college at Boston University, where he studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Mathematics. He spent a year after college at the Massachusetts General Hospital, working on developing iron-based nanoparticles for targeted diagnostics and therapeutics. He subsequently attended medical school at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He went on to complete internal medicine residency at Stanford, serving as Chief Resident in 2017-2018. More He plans to continue a career in academic cardiology with a focus on cardiovascular disease prevention and health inequities, centered on atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and cardiometabolic disease such as dyslipidemias and diabetes. Related to this, he is interested in the role of health tech/digital health and is an American Heart Association SFRN fellow at the Center for Heart Health Technology (H2T) through the Center for Digital Health.

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Ramzi Dudum, MD

Dr. Ramzi Dudum grew up in San Francisco, CA, before attending UCLA for his undergraduate studies. He then traveled east to Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD where he completed medical school at George Washington University and his master’s in public health at Johns Hopkins. He stayed at Johns Hopkins, completing his internal medicine training in the Osler Residency Program and worked with Drs. Roger Blumenthal and Michael Blaha researching cardiovascular prevention, screening, and risk-prediction. Now a cardiology fellow at Stanford, he plans to continue this work as a physician-scientist.

Daniel Li, MD

Dr. Daniel Li was born in China and immigrated to the Bay Area at a young age. He attended college at the University of California San Diego where he began his research career studying cytoskeletal proteins involved in cardiomyopathies. He then worked at the National Institutes of Health prior to attending medical school at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. There, he studied the mechanisms linking diet, microbiome and cardiovascular disease using a systems biology approach and continued this research through the Sarnoff Cardiovascular Research Fellowship.More Daniel plans to pursue an academic career with the goal of developing a translational program using a systems approach to identify novel biomarkers that impact cardiovascular disease.

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Diana Melo, MD

Dr. Diana Melo was born in Palmira, Colombia and grew up in Valley Stream, NY. She attended Stony Brook University and majored in biochemistry with a double minor in bioengineering and chemistry. She graduated Summa Cum Laude and with departmental honors. While at Stony Brook University, Diana was in the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) program and participated in several mentoring programs working with high school and middle school girls to expose them to topics in science, technology and engineering, a mission that she continues to be passionate about. Diana earned her medical degree from New York University. More During medical school, she spent an extra year working at the Heart, Lung and Blood Institute as part of the Medical Research Scholars Program at the NHI where she studied the cardiovascular complications of Erdheim-Chester Disease. She attended UCSF for Internal medicine residency where she solidified her interest in cardiology especially through various research projects, including a project studying the use of cardiovascular MRA with ferumoxytol enhancement for TAVR planning in patients with renal insufficiency. She is interested in pursuing a career in interventional cardiology.

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Kaylin Nguyen, MD

Dr. Kaylin Nguyen grew up in Orange County, California. She attended college at UCLA, where she majored in Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics. She completed both her MD and Internal Medicine training at UCSF. She has research experience in atrial fibrillation risk factors, cardiometabolic consequences of psychiatric medication use, and mobile and digital health. She plans to pursue an academic career with a focus on health disparities and digital health.

Brian Palmisano, MD, PhD

Dr. Brian Palmisano grew up in Quakertown, PA and went to University of Rochester where he majored in Biochemistry and Chemistry. After college, Brian spent a year at the National Institutes of Health before going to Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, where he completed the MD-PhD program. He completed his PhD under the mentorship of Dr. John Stafford. His thesis explored novel pathways of lipid metabolism with an emphasis on the influence of sex hormone signaling. More He also worked on understanding novel pathways of selective insulin resistance and its impact on total body glucose and lipid metabolism. Dr. Palmisano completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Stanford through the Translational Investigator Pathway. Dr. Palmisano’s research interests are centered on using metabolism to validate novel targets identified through genetic and genomic screens. His ultimate goal is to identify new therapeutic targets to prevent atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Dr. Palmisano’s clinical interests are in Preventative Cardiology.

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Krishna Pundi, MD

Dr. Krishna Pundi was born in India and immigrated to Minnesota at the age of 10, where he studied Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and received his MD from Mayo Medical School. He completed his internal medicine training at Stanford and subsequently spent a year as the post-doctoral research fellow for the ENGAGE-AF clinical trial at Stanford working to improve shared decision-making in atrial fibrillation care. Krishna hopes to develop the skills to become an electrophysiologist and independent researcher of arrhythmia outcomes focusing on (1) improving patient risk stratification for complex therapeutic decision-making, More (2) differential outcomes of frail and multi-morbid populations, and (3) gaps in guideline-based arrhythmia care through both retrospective and prospective studies.

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Natalie Tapaskar, MD

Dr. Natalie Tapaskar grew up in both Toronto and Chicago and attended college at Northwestern University. She received her MD from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and completed her Internal Medicine training at The University of Chicago. Her research focuses include risk stratification tools for patients on anticoagulation and quality improvement interventions. She hopes to pursue advanced heart failure with a focus on socioeconomic disparities and improvement of coordination of care.

Caitlin Bell, MD

Dr. Caitlin Bell was born and raised in Denver, Colorado and attended college at the University of Colorado - Boulder where she had the opportunity to work with Dr. Tom Cech investigating telomerase biochemistry. She completed her MD at Vanderbilt University Medical School, during which she spent a year as a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator research fellow researching melanoma genesis through the lens of genetics and stem cell biology. More She then trained in internal medicine at Stanford University Hospital before continuing her clinical training in cardiology. She plans to pursue a career as a physician-scientist, leveraging her prior research experiences to investigate the process of atherogenesis and determinants of smooth muscle cell fates leading to clinically significant vascular disease.

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Aly Elezaby, MD, PhD

Dr. Aly Elezaby attended college at the University of Arizona, where he studied molecular and cellular biology. He graduated from the MD-PhD program at Boston University, with a dissertation focus on the effects of diet on mitochondrial function and oxidative stress in the heart. He completed residency training in internal medicine at Stanford as part of the Translational Investigator Program, and intends to pursue a career studying cardiac metabolism with a clinical focus on heart failure.

Ning "Maggie" Ning, MD, PharmD

Dr. Ning was born in China, but she grew up mostly in Texas. She went to the University of Texas at Austin for undergrad and received her PharmD degree at the College of Pharmacy. She received her MD degree from UT Southwestern Medical Center and moved to California for Internal Medicine residency at Stanford. Dr. Ning plans to continue her training as a cardiology fellow at Stanford. More She is passionate about both cardiology and oncology and thoroughly enjoys taking care of these patient populations. Subsequently, she has completed several research projects and publications in both fields. She hopes to combine her clinical and research interests by contributing to the growth of the field of cardio-oncology. She hopes she can also use her pharmacology background to better understand the complex pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics involving oncology therapies and cardiotoxicity. She is particularly interested in the role of noninvasive imaging to help identify these patients that may be at risk for cardiotoxicity.

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Pablo Sanchez, MD

Dr. Pablo Sanchez grew up in Barquisimeto, Venezuela. He attended college, earned a degree in physiology, and medical school at The University of Arizona, in Tucson. He completed Internal Medicine training at Brigham & Women's Hospital, and served as Chief Resident from 2018-2019. His research, under the tutelage Dr. David Morrow and Dr. Benjamin SciricaMore in the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) group, focused on clinical outcomes of the complex patient composition in the modern Cardiac Intensive Care Unit as well as prognostication of neurologic outcomes in cardiac arrest patients. He is broadly interested in the interplay between respiratory failure and outcomes in patients on mechanical circulatory support. He is now a fellow at Stanford and plans to pursue a career in critical care and cardiovascular academic medicine.

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James Tooley III, MD

Dr. James Tooley was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. He attended Johns Hopkins University where he graduated with honors with a degree in Biophysics. He received his MD and MHS from Yale School of Medicine, where he graduated cum laude and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research fellow. He completed his Internal Medicine residency training at Stanford. He is interested electrophysiology, ECGs, and research using the electronic healthcare record. James plans to have an academic career as a clinical investigator practicing electrophysiology.

Chad Weldy, MD, PhD

Dr. Chad Weldy received his M.D. from Duke University School of Medicine and completed his internal medicine internship and residency at Stanford University as a member of the Stanford Translational Investigator Program (TIP). Prior to entering medical school, Dr. Weldy received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the University of Washington, Division of Cardiology where he conducted basic science research investigations within the fields of cardiovascular biology, redox biology, toxicology, and epigenetics. Dr. Weldy has a clinical interest in the field of inherited cardiomyopathies More where he treats patients and families within Stanford’s Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease (SCICD) with Dr. Euan Ashley. He will also be joining the lab of Dr. Thomas Quertermous where he will pursue research as a physician-scientist to better understand human genetics, epigenetics, and transcriptional regulation in cardiovascular disease.

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Leila Beach, MD

Dr. Leila Yeh Beach studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Stanford before going on to earn her MD from the UCSF School of Medicine. During this period, she spent a year in Beijing investigating the heparin contamination incident alongside teams from the FDA and Peking University. She subsequently completed her internal medicine residency at UCSF where she conducted research regarding cardiovascular health outcomes disparities along race and ethnic lines. She is now back at Stanford for her cardiology fellowship and hopes to apply her research interest in racial and ethnic disparities to her clinical interest in heart failure and transplant.

Andrew Chang, MD, MS

Dr. Andy Chang was born in Columbus, Ohio, but grew up in Phoenix, Honolulu, and Las Vegas. He completed his undergraduate studies at Yale University, then received his MD from Stanford. He finished his residency training in the global health track of Stanford's internal medicine program in 2016, then served as chief resident in 2017. He completed an MS in Epidemiology from Stanford prior to starting cardiology fellowship, and is now enrolled in the PhD program in Epidemiology and Population Health Science. Andy's research focus is in utilizing epidemiology More and outcomes methodology to analyze the impact of cardiovascular disease in global vulnerable populations. He is currently engaged in projects to characterize the quality of care of rheumatic heart disease patients in Uganda and Sudan, as well as describing the effects of the US opiate epidemic on incident heart disease. He intends to pursue a career in academic global health research with a clinical focus on cardiovascular imaging.

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Brian Wayda, MD, MPH

Dr. Brian Wayda received his MD at Yale University and completed internal medicine residency training at Columbia University Medical Center. Now a cardiology fellow at Stanford, he plans to pursue an academic career in advanced heart failure and transplant. He has conducted research investigating racial and socioeconomic disparities in outcomes after heart transplant and myocardial infarction, and is now engaged in research on the comparative effectiveness and More safety of immunosuppression regimens after transplant. Prior to his medical training, he obtained bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Economics and an MPH at Yale, and spent two years with the Clinton Foundation in Mozambique and South Africa.

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Jennifer Woo, MD

Dr. Jennifer Woo grew up in Los Angeles, California and attended college at Brown University. She then completed her MD and internal medicine and pediatrics residency at UCLA. There she developed a primary care clinical decision support tool and a heart failure app. She was the recipient of the Barbara Streisand research award for her work on implementing a preventive cardiology teen text-messaging program. More She plans on a career in adult congenital heart disease with a research focus on the hemodynamics of the right ventricle in the Tetralogy of Fallot population.

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General Cardiology Fellowship

Overview

Core Curriculum

VAPA Health Care System

Research Training and Education

General Cardiology Application Process

Fellows

Prior Fellows

Fellows Salaries and Benefits